Texas Rangers Blog

Rangers’ Matt Harrison will take it slow early against Mariners

ARLINGTON — Matt Harrison has had five days’ rest since his last start, and that gives a guy a little time to think. So the left-handed pitcher really tore apart his game and said he needs to find his calm place a little quicker in the game.

Harrison is 5-3 with a 4.72 ERA this season, and he showed in a 3-1 win at Seattle on Tuesday that he has solid control. Harrison went seven innings, allowed one earned run on seven hits and threw 75 strikes on 114 pitches. The problem is he threw 36 pitches in the first inning and could have been in a deep hole had he not recovered quickly.

“I feel I can use how I bounced back after the first,” Harrison said of the lessons learned. “Same team and everything.”

Harrison said he is coming out a little too charged up in the first inning and possibly throwing too hard, and he will attempt to change that Monday against the Mariners.

“I think you come out and the arm feels the strongest in the first inning and you want to let it go, and I think I need to just tell myself to calm down,” Harrison said. “The focus you need to have is to just throw strikes and put the ball in play. Instead of throwing harder, you want to throw it easier. Even if it’s a couple of miles an hour faster, it’s not any good if you’re leaving it up in the zone. If you’re throwing 93 or 94 [mph], maybe you can spot down and away, and you’ll get a lot more outs a lot quicker that way.”

Rangers manager Ron Washington said he noticed an improvement in Harrison after the first inning in Seattle.

“He started attacking the strike zone a little more,” Washington said. “I thought his sinker and his change-up started to come into play after the second. In the first inning, he was just a little erratic with his mechanics. Then, the second inning he started to get back into his mechanics, and things started working.”